On this day in 1991 Mr Bungle released their eponymous debut
album through Warner Brothers. This album changed the people's perception of a Mike Patton they thought they had come to understand via Faith No More's 'The Real Thing'. The album expertly pieces together different genres and themes to create a schizophrenic masterpiece unlike anything before or after. The musicianship of the six members is outstanding. This is our tribute to Mr Bungle.

Press Release

Vlad Drac -- vocals

Scummy -- guitars

Heifetz -- drums

Trevor Roy Dunn -- bass

Bär -- tenor sax

Theobald Brooks Lengyel -- alto / bäri intonation

Post metal, post modern, post logical, the sound of Mr.
Bungle has been setting off sonic shock waves from the group's Northern
California home base since 1985. Now the seismic activity is spreading
nationwide with the release of the group's debut Warner Bros. Records release,
Mr. Bungle. Featuring such apocalyptic anthems as "Slowly Growing
Deaf," "Love Is A Fist," "The Girls Of Porn" and the
terrifyingly original "Quote Unquote," Mr. Bungle by Mr. Bungle makes
hamburger out of every cherished cow within rifle range...and cooks up
something compelling, totally committed music in the process.

Spawned in the bovine and redwood hinterlands of Eureka and
Arcata, Mr. Bungle was distilled from a cluster of stragglers, rejects and
misfits thrown out of local death metal groups in the mid-Eighties. Taking its
name from an arcane grade school hygiene film, the original quartet, which
included vocalist Vlad Drac, guitarist Scummy and bassist Trevor Roy Dunn,
built on their grindcore roots with a stylistic spread that included everything
from white noise to raw jazz, recruiting various co-conspirators along the way,
most notably drummer Heifetz.

In the spring of '86, Mr. Bungle made their first of four
home-brewed demos, a collection of original tracks that quickly became a hot
item on the region's bustling underground tape trading circuit. The group's
musical reach, meanwhile, continued to grasp new styles of endlessly
incongruity, necessitating the enlistment of horn players Bär and Theobald
Brooks Lengyel. By '88, Mr. Bungle's line up had jelled, even as their
galvanizing live show spread the word south to the Bay Area and beyond. A final
independent demo captured the band's increasingly, and aggressively, original
musical impulses and attracted the attention of several major labels.

By late 1990, Mr. Bungle had selected Warner Bros. as their
label-of-choice and, by January of this year, they were in the studio recording
their debut outing. At the production helm: John Zorn, whose skills as a
composer and sax player for the avant jazz ensemble Naked City, helped enhance
and expand the group's already formidable musical vernacular.

The result is Mr. Bungle, an album that splinters sound into
a thousand chards before putting it all back together again into a whole, and wholly
original, new kind of music.

Reviews

Kerrang! | August 1991 | Don Kaye | KKKK

Anything I could say to you in this review would not
adequately describe Mr Bungle. Put it
this way; if you think Faith No More are
a progressive, alternative answer to rock's most isolationist, humdrum
elements, Mr Bungle make FNM sound positively mainstream.

Of course there is a link between the two: singer Mike
Patton (known here as Vlad Drac) fronts both bands and brings his eccentric
stamp of personality to both. But with Mr Bungle, his character is magnified to
the hundredth power: and his talk about playing with himself in interviews is
manifested here in his lyrics, as sleazy a slimefest as you're likely to find
on a major record label (just check out 'Girls Of Porn', which also provides a
clue to the origin of the band's name).

Simply put, Patton flies, somersaults, tumbles and slinks
all over this album, but it's par for the course as Mr Bungle are nothing if
not a musical roller coaster ride that takes you 500 feet in the air, drops you
like a rock, sends you spinning out of control and ass over tea kettle before
bringing you down - albeit none too gently.

Metal, punk, rap, funk, jazz, classical derivation, gothic
horror film music, video game sound effects - it's all here. The songs are more
like symphonies of the bizarre, often slipping into various combinations of all
of the above genres throughout their length. Honestly, I'd be hard pressed to
remember exactly how 'Travolta' goes as it never quite comes back to the same
place - but when it's over the track's sheer energy and improvisation leaves
you breathless.

On the other hand 'Carousel' rumbles along on an ominous
chorus and funky scratch-mix sensibility, while 'Girls Of Porn' comes down hard
with a throbbing groove shuffle and monstrous riffage. The entire album
crackles with a weird electricity and the air of a rock and roll circus gone
insane. Which is possibly the closest anyone will ever come to describe Mr
Bungle.

Hot Metal | August 1991 | Ziola Raye | 5/5

The puerile rantings or wretched mutations of American
youth, or one of the most original forms of noise to be committed to vinyl this
year? Take your pick, Mr.Bungle are at once chaotic, cataclysmic, powerful,
deranged and uncomfortable listening. This band would probably never have
surfaced on a major label, if it weren't for the current fascination for their
reluctant star and vocalist, Mike Patton, whose presence will obviously
interest a lot of parties who would have otherwise cast this aside as too
surreal and offbeat for mass consumption. But it is as far removed from FNM as
Mr.Patton probably meant it to be.

For those who managed to get a copy of the brilliant (now
deleted) Bungle demo tape OU818, there will be some surprises. The expansive
production by John Zorn has added layers of eccentric, and sometimes just too
unpalatable, background to reworked tracks that graced the aforementioned demo,
like "The Girls Of Porn" and "Squeeze Me Macaroni". Where
before these appealed for their laid back idiocy, there now lurks a sharp edge
of aural insanity, that at times has a touch too much frenzied input for the
ears to take in. Even the sampling of the innocuously irritating Nintendo Mario
Brothers theme tune takes on a sinister air in the context of this majestically
manic me-lee.

Yet it remains absorbing, if only for the infectious bass
riffs, a brilliantly innovative horn section and its ability to bounce through
more chops and changes per song than most bands manage in a whole lifetime.
"Egg" is a case in hand, a screaming cachophony of jazz encrusted mad
opera, "there's no place like home", gurgles Patton, like a man
committing his nervous breakdown onto vinyl. His ability to run riot over his
vocal scale, from the highest pig like squeal to the lowest demonic growl with
ease, is at once scary and magnificent.

Lyrically, no subject is too scary or too sordid for Bungle
to explore. Littered with various profanities and running the gamut from
masturbation to bestiality, most of it is designed to offend, but its schoolboy
mentality ensures that it only amuses. "I was giving some head to some
French bread / It was a four course orgy on the spread of my bed / I get better
penetration with a fork and a spoon" Shocking to some maybe, but more
likely, Patton's attempt to distance himself from the pretty poster boy image
he's so obviously trying to escape.

If you can imagine Zappa on bad acid, then you'll get a fair
idea of what this album entails. But if you prefer your listening more laidback
and harmonious, here's some advice: take a Valium - it's not going to be an
easy ride.

Rock Hard Magazine | Issue 8 | Wolfgang Schaefer | 9/10

The joke of the month does not come from Bonn [capital of
germany it's from the United States, because what Mike Patton and his friends
has produced under the ominous name Mr.Bungle is topping everything that had
ever exist in this category. They are moving respect-less from one track to the other.Starting with free jazz, funk, rap, hip hop, ska over to the dumb metal
grunt - the band does not stop for anything. In doing so they formed the past
decades of music history to an exciting, lovely 50 minutes joyride. One time it
sounds ridiculous, the other it's a perfect quotation. I know this all sounds
unusual, yes it tests the nerves af the author of this article, so that
dislikes are involved with this review. Therefore this album, which really does
not contain one single song, should be taken as it is; an exciting, odd,
sometimes a crude collection of musical pieces. Not more and not less.

Rock Power | 10 / 10 | August 91 | Richard Heggie

No More Faith. Mr, Bungle is not the son of any famous
father. Mike Patton's alter-ego is a rough-hewn, crusty individual stripped
from the soul of a dancing psycho's clubfoot. Parentage unknown but spiritual
guardians aplenty. It's all a conspiracy, you know. Some time ago in America,
an inner sanctum of radical young movers swore to subvert the traditions of
metal and rock 'n' roll, those two most conservative of bastions. A few years
later, Mr. Bungle rears his malformed skull and gyrates through the pores of an
audience now primed and willing to accept anything. Anything from the Specials
and The Mothers mangle by Bart Simpson on 'Stubb (A Dub)', to the menacing
metal-ska carousel of 'Travolta', through the pure sleazy funk of 'Girls Of
Porn'. Everything yet nothing. If you find a pigeon-hole for this, the odds are
it will already be inhabited by a perverted winged-creature, lapping out a
grotesque melody on a bontempi organ through a Marshall stack. Hold it. Don't
dismiss this as crypto-Journalistic claptrap. Take a risk. Here's a clue.
Eclectic is a word that sounds like electric, ends like hectic and rhymes with
quintessential. Your Move, And remember, we're playing off the board.

Artwork

Images used for the front cover and various pages inside are
illustrated by Dan Sweetman and taken from issue #1 'A Cotton Candy Autopsy' of
the comic book series 'Beautiful Stories For Ugly Children'.

The inside work is by P.Earwig.

The reverse image is taken from this advert.

Articles

Mr.Bungle interview | 1991

By Kim Edwards

Here is the story: In the beginning, there were people and
the people, they ate the apple and after the apple, the people, they took a
dump and from the dump came Turd, and from Turd, Mr. Bungle.

A history of Mr. Bungle in fifty words or less, from the musings
of guitar wild guy Trey Spruance: "It was 1985 when we started. We were in
rival death metal bands. Jed and I were rivals with Mike and Trevor. Trevor and
Mike got kicked out of their death metal band because they wanted to shave
their heads and call it Turd. So we just sort of merged (okay, over fifty
words) into this one band and we called it Mr. Bungle."

And then, says Mike Patton, the voice box, "Except they
weren't really death metal and we were. Trevor and I wore more spikes and
stuff. We still are a death metal band, that's very important to know. No one
ever notes it."

Duly noted. Mr. Bungle is still a death metal band. Mike
Patton continues, "We have roots deep in the death metal scene."

Deep. The name? Spruance: "We came really close to
calling the band Summer Breeze." Patton: "Real close." Spruance:
"And then we thought Mr. Bungle was a little better."

Mr. Bungle? Spruance: "As friends, we devised certain
names for different people around school, and there was this one particular guy
who was a total goober that we called Mr. Bungle. That name was inspired by the
Pee Wee Herman special where they show footage of the little kid who was the
amoral bastard, who didn't clean his belly button or whatever."

Yeah, so belly button lint, but what is this 'Turd' stuff?
Then comes Trevor Dunn, the bass man, and he says: "Turd, I'm not even
supposed to be talking to you about Turd." Hmmm... why not? Dunn:
"Well, first of all, because you're a girl."

Be brave. Dunn: "Turd is just the hugest concept in the
world. It's the biggest racist, chauvinist concept ever."

Spruance, you know, Trey Spruance, the one who drives around
his hometown, Eureka California, with girls and tries to get them to take their
clothes off and then jacks off, that Spruance, he says: "We've gotten so
much from Turd.

That's probably the biggest influence on Bungle, like
'Tractor in my Balls' and all that stuff is Turd. Just Trevor screaming random
things into a microphone. Some of the images are really strong and it's easy to
come along and put them into a neat format, because they come across so
convincingly in Turd."

Hmmm. Spruance: "Yeah, you wouldn't believe it. It's
pretty amazing stuff. It's on a Realistic tape. Can't be recorded on anything
else. It's just that one Realistic tape. It's full now. They haven't made an
album for like three years or whatever. I'm the one Turd fan and I've performed
Turd surgery."

What? Spruance: "Every time they're done recording or
listening to it (the Realistic cassette), they have to throw it up against the
wall and wherever it lands is where it stays for the rest of the time until
they listen to it again. And it broke one time and I had to fix it."

Because your'e the one Turd fan? Spruance: "Yeah, and
they didn't have the know-how. Turd is like a really big union within our band.
It sneaks out on stage as well. There's sort of a thing between Mike and Trevor
that nobody in the world, including their best fan, understands."

The way they lick each other and stuff? Spruance:
"Yeah. The things that happen are definitely Turd, even though the roles
are reversed in Bungle -- Mike is singing instead of Trevor. Turd still exists.
It's hiding in Bungle."

Bungle's id? Spruance: "It's a subliminal thing
happening. Turd's big. It's a big thing with us. Actually, there's a new song
that I'm making up called "The Road Going into the Trees," which is a
Turd song. It's about this little road."

What is it about Turd that you love so much? Spruance:
"Well, if you heard it, you might know." You don't have a tape,
though. There's only one tape? Spruance: "There's only one." And that
tape can never be reproduced. Spruance: "Exactly. You have to come to
Trevor's house to hear it. There's something about it. It just has me rolling.
It's really witty. Trevor can be pretty amazing sometimes."

So, Trevor Dunn can be pretty amazing sometimes, but will
his mom allow a visit to hear the Turd tape, and even then, will his dad allow
a foray into the Trevor room where the Turd tape resides, and the thing is,
what about these guys' parents anyway? Do they listen to Mr. Bungle?

Dunn: "They asked to hear the tape (OU818, the last Mr.
Bungle release) again not too long ago. But they wonder about the lyrics and
say like, 'Do you have to use those words?'"

When asked about his parents, Patton says: "You have to
understand, my parents are the type that own porno."

Yes boys and girls, Mr. Bungle can talk nasty. Your mom
might not approve. They have words in their songs like 'butt bang' and 'dick'
and 'ween' and 'wong' and 'dickweed'. There are also words like 'soliloquy' and
'incubus' and 'coprophagist' and even 'chivalry.' Yes, it's true. Mr. Bungle
went to college.

They all go to college or went at one time. Spruance is sort
of a music major with leanings toward physics. Dunn graduated with a music
major. Theo Lengyel, the alto sax person, is a physics major. Bar McKinnon, the
tenor sax guy, is a music major. Danny Heifetz, the drummer dude, has a degree
in history. Patton was an English major but has sort of, you know, taken a
leave of absence from university to pursue fame and fortune.

And how famous is Mike Patton? Well, he is so famous that
Rolling Stone published a letter from his mom. He is so famous that when he
goes to the mall in Eureka, he gets mobbed for his autograph. He is so famous
that lots of people who didn't used to like him in high school like him now.
And how did he get famous? Well, you know, he is that singer guy in Faith No
More. So why is he in two bands? What else has he got to do? He likes it.

After Mr. Bungle initially formed, they made a tape and the
tape was called THE RAGING WRATH OF THE EASTER BUNNY. A tape very close to
their death metal roots, and sporting a photo of Mr. Bungle's namesake on the
cover dressed up in bunny ears and the whole thing.

Spruance: "That whole thing (Mr. Bungle's music during
the RAGING BUNNY era), it was something that became sort of common later, sort
of having a sense of humor about death metal. But at the time we were the
first."

"Then we decided that we wanted to change because we
started getting way more into Fishbone and stuff. We all listened to all sorts
of different stuff.

Mike worked at a record store and had all these wild tapes,
so we decided to broaden our horizons. We kicked our drummer (Jed) out, who was
a death metal head, we got the two horn players (Theo and Bar) and we got this
guy named Hans on drums. He played like Fishbone (the first album), so we liked
him.

And thus enter the BOWEL OF CHILEY (the second tape) era.
That was our transition period, we're not too happy about that. That was when
Mike sang just like Fishbone. We were just a Fishbone clone. It was bad."

BOWEL OF CHILEY? Spruance: "Trevor fucked up in
Denny's. He wanted a bowl of chili, but he goes, 'I'll have a bowel of chiley.'
We laughed for about an hour."

And named a tape after the occurrence. Spruance: "Yeah,
big stupid, dumb tape and then we hated it. Then we did GOD DAMMIT, I LOVE
AMERICA (1988) because it was getting to be the funky days. And then we kicked
Hans out, because he was a flaky mother. We had a trumpet back in those days,
kicked the trumpet player out, because he was a flake too. Flakiness is the
reason we kicked those guys out. Got a sax player who is Bar, who can also play
keyboards and drums, and got this drummer named Danny who played in a local
band who had a big influence on us too, Eggly Bagelface. He has a degree and
his grandpa was Jascha Heifetz (the famous violinist)."

So, current lineup and then the most recent tape OU818. The
tape with the stuff on it. The tape that has an entire song about masturbation
-- 'Girls of Porn.'

Masturbation. Yes, Patton has talked about it in Spin, in
Rock Scene, NME and Kerrang! Patton has talked about it just about everywhere,
he always gets asked the masturbation question, so here is what Spruance has to
say.

Spruance: "We're all really heavy masturbators. I'm the
worst." How many times per day? Spruance: "Five. Trevor can
masturbate twice a day, maximum. He's lucky if he does it three times in a
week. Mike and I are similar, we talk about what feels good and stuff and we're
pretty similar on that. Trevor's the real oddball."

Normal masturbation in males (that means you reader -- okay,
we know girls do it too, but the stats vary, so we'll deal with boys here) runs
the gamut from two to three times per month to six times per day. So nobody's
too odd, hmm? Just being a dude.

So where did this OU818 come from? Are the Bungle babes
obsessed with sex? What's the deal? Spruance: "The deal is this: If you
listen to any of our other tapes, there isn't even one cuss word. I don't know
what happened. We were just in a really good mood, but sort of a sexually
frustrated mood. But then, when we get around each other, we're very comforted,
because we have each other. And the band was maybe just a thing to make us a
little more happy about our situations."

People grab onto the sex thing quick. Spruance: "Well, because
it's such a dumb thing, you can put it on in the background. It's like a party
mentality thing and people are really into that at shows. They're into like
shaking their asses and having bands be the soundtrack to their courtships.
That makes us accessible to the party thing. In a way, OU818 sort of is a
misrepresentation, but in another way, it's really close to us because we go
into phases like that. In a way, when people say it has sexual overtones to it,
it's really more just masturbation overtones, and it adds increasing dimensions
when, you know, here we are playing this music, then there's like girls
everywhere and we're still not getting it."

And says Patton: "About the sex thing, well, you know
..."

Yeah, they are not obsessed with sex, they are obsessed with faeces. And to see a real live Mr. Bungle show? Well known for their props. They
wear clown and carrot costumes and S&M masks, old clown lady heads and
a Frankenstein face or two. They have blow-up dolls, dance like retards, lick
each other and cook and digest the occasional burrito on stage.

Spruance: "The music sounds like shit when we play it
live. We're a tape band. When we're concentrating, we can sound good, but we
never even try to sound good."

Is going out to see a Bungle show better than sex? Spruance:
"It totally depends on whether someone has had sex with the available
person a billion times already or not." Is seeing Mr. Bungle safer than
sex? Spruance: "Safer? No. Mike broke a girl's teeth out and broke her
nose at one show. He dove on top of this girl. He was wearing a football hat.
He breaks cameras all the time. So, I mean, I can't say it's safer than having
sex."

A sold-out jaunt down the California coastline the first of
January serves to show that people like this stuff. Even a photo and a mention
in Rolling Stone's 'Random Notes' column. Imagine. From suburbia to the big
city, Mr. Bungle packed them in and pleased the people with not only their own
compositions but some very tasteful cover tunes.

Spruance: "We've done a lot (of cover tunes). In our
stupid days, we were doing 'Earache My Eye', stuff like that. We started doing,
halfway for real, but totally stupid, we did Van Halen's 'Dirty Movies'. We've
done 'We Are the Champions', which we changed to 'B Are the Champions'. We do
an MTV song probably at every show. Like everytime we go out, we try to make up
a whole new MTV song that is sort of a mishmash of the top ten MTV hits at the
time."

And what of MTV? Spruance: "I've got two people that
I'm going to fucking kill if we ever go to MTV -- Ricki Rachtman and Julie
Brown. Man, I'm going to stab that bitch. She's totally talking shit about us.
They play the 'Falling to Pieces' video and she goes, 'That was the new one
from Faith No More. Mike Patton, I think you should just rip that Mr. Bungle
tape to pieces,' or whatever. Just like being a bitch. Because I guess Martha
Quinn has it (the Bungle tape) and she likes it and Julie Brown hates it and
she's just a ...."

Animosity from the media? Spruance: "Yeah, a little
bit. Steffan Chirazi (a contributor to Kerrang!), you can go ahead and print
this, I'm going to fucking kill that guy, too. He's just a big, stupid dork and
hates us because he loves Faith No More. The guy can't smell anything. He's a
total moron."

And this stuff, this preferred violence, pales in comparison
to what Spruance says he and his band Scourge (yeah, he is in another band,
too), who are total psychotic killer types, will do to the Red Hot Chili
Peppers (who have threatened Patton with bodily harm for stealing Anthony's
moves -- yeah of course, because RHCP are the only guys who have ever seen a
rap video). Scourge, being the psycho nut butts that they are, will inflict
true damage if the opportunity ever presents itself. Anthony, you have been
warned.

Nasty boy. And so, is Patton being bad by being in both
bands? Spruance: "A lot of people totally think that he's just kind of
waiting to quit that band (Faith No More). That he's just sort of waiting for
it to die down so that he can use it as a stepping stone or something. That's
just not true. People always ask me, 'Who do you think he likes more, you or
FNM?' How am I supposed to answer that? FNM were both his and my favorite band
for a long time, INTRODUCE YOURSELF and everything. We really loved that
band."

Patton: "Trey liked them better than I did."

But do you get more groupies with Patton's face being
plastered all over the glossy metal rags? Has the FNM association brought you
greater sex lives? Spruance: "Well, I don't know about 'getting' groupies.
I mean, we have them, but we never hang out with them. I hate them, because I
remember being the guy in the audience and seeing my friends, girls -- who were
probably pretty cool -- act so stupid when a band came to town and it would
piss me off so bad. Things like that don't really change, just because I'm on
the receiving end of it, or whatever, doesn't really change it and it makes me
as sick now as it did then. Especially when somebody that everyone would think
is a beautiful girl is just using that to get close to people. I can't handle
that and I can't really bring myself to think that they're good people. Also,
there's a lot of people who try to use me to get to Mike, too. A lot of that,
you can imagine. That's really easy to spot."

Fans in general. Lots of them. Lots of fan mail. Letters
from girls talking nasty who get quick replies from T. Dunn, just to see how
far they'll go. A tape or two of orgasmic rapture utilizing strategic Bungle
member names at the height of ecstasy. Requests for tapes from all over the
place, no doubt Patton's word of mouth process has gotten many a tape sold. And
what to do with all these anxiously awaiting fans? Why, make them some music,
of course! Mr. Bungle are doing studio time in January and February. They have
John Zorn, the infante terrible of the hardcore weirdness jazz world, to help
produce and/or mix the new material and some steadfast interest from Sire
Records to put the noise to product and distribute the mother. Life keeps
getting better. All they need to do is sit down and kick it.

Spruance: "When we do our album, we're going to sort of
update all of the songs, because we're really sick of them, because they're
really old. I like 'Egg'. I like the lyric, everything on that just worked out
real well. I can't wait to do that in the studio. I like pretty much everything
Trevor writes, actually. 'Slowly Growing Deaf' is really good, too."

And there are lots of new songs to come, "My Ass is on
Fire," "Platypus," "Stubb A Dub." Spruance: "Even
though I can't say that I'm so killer, I like 'Stubb A Dub' a lot, but I made
it up, so it's not fair for me to say that. It's sort of a refreshing angle on
the Bungle scene, it's not like what we've normally done."

And where does the new stuff come from? Spruance: "What
we usually do is we write a whole bunch of songs at once. It just sort of
happens in waves. We'll be playing a lot, and then we'll stop playing and then
we won't even practice, and we'll just kind of make up songs whenever we feel
like it, and then at the end of a dry spell, we have all these new songs. It's
really strange.

"A capsule of what happens: On OU818, Mike wrote
'Squeeze Me Macaroni' and 'Girls of Porn', but a lot of those riffs are my
riffs that he used in his songs and he wrote the lyrics, so it's his song kind
of thing. Same thing with Trevor, he wrote all of 'Slowly Growing Deaf', I wrote
some of 'Love is a Fist' but he wrote most of it. It's all a collaborative
effort, but we sort of lean towards things. One is one person's song and one is
the other's. We get inspiration from all sorts of stuff. It's just sort of a
general outpouring of crap. It's usually a spontaneous or on-the-spot thing
that happens."

But is it spontaneous with Patton in Australia or Europe and
not within close proximity to dig on the Bungle vibe? Patton misses his band
mates and the sit-down-together collaborative effort the band had grown
accustomed to. So, he writes lyrics, etc. while on the road with FNM, but looks
forward to productive time with his Bungle playmates.

Spruance: "Yeah, it really works when we sit down to do
it together. I mean, like 'Girls of Porn', we just sat down and made that whole
thing up in one night, just me, Mike, and Trevor. Sometimes those things work
out really well, because you're not pressuring yourself to make up the best
song in the world. We're just having fun, and that helps."

So, they're going to record and then they want a record
company and what is it they want from a record company? Spruance: "Well,
for one, we want to be able to do our songs untampered." This means
leaving in all the nastiness and obscure references that anyone who is not a
Bungle-man might never understand. Spruance: "I think money is kind of a
big thing. Not for personal shit, but we want to do a good album. We want it to
be well-produced, we just want to be able to have the luxury of doing what we
want.

"I always think about how by now I'm supposed to be
bored with the whole thing (Mr. Bungle, waiting for Patton, waiting to record,
etc.). By now, I'm supposed to be, not excited about it. The band's been around
five years, I'm supposed to say things like, 'Oh well, the world is this way
and nothing's exciting to me and music is music,' and it just hasn't happened
to any of us. We're still totally wide-eyed kids, even Mike. We're just
wide-eyed idealistic people."

All the way from dudes who just hung out with each other --
Spruance: "At school, the group was me, Mike and Trevor. We would just
hang out with each other and we never made any real friends. People knew us and
socially accepted us because we were in a band, but that's kind of where it
ended. Like Mike, everybody hated him. He was like a big dick, everybody
totally hated him. He used to be real sarcastic, like really bad. He wasn't too
well-liked, which is funny, because now I can go down and watch FNM and see a
bunch of Humboldt county-ers with their eyes super wide open, just thinking
about what a dream come true this all is for Eureka or whatever."

Patton: "It's like I did it for the town." -- to
home town heroes. And this far, without even yet actually recording an album.
What could be next? Disney World?

Only the globe and the heavens left to conquer. Mr. Bungle
is on the way. From a town called Eureka, which is the state motto of
California. Eureka, which from the original Greek means, 'I found it', and
which is originally attributed to that wild man Archimedes, made famous for his
invention of the upwards screw. They come bearing signs which they prominently
display during concerts, 'Free Cock'. No one shows up after the gig to collect
the offered delicacies, but those days may be behind them.

If you cannot wait for the newest recordings, go to your
room, set up several phonographic devices, and play, all in conjunction, some
Poulenc, some Slayer, some Sly & the Family Stone, a bit of Naked City,
and any Dr. Demento you can get your hands on. Then take massive hits of
Ex-Lax, and for good measure, try and get a Fellini film, but don't read the
subtitles playing in the background. Too much? Just order a tape. END.

Teach Me Violence, issue #1

By A. Keane Stern

You may have heard about this new band called Mr. Bungle.
Actually, they're not a new band. Mr. Bungle has been around for about six
years now. I had heard a lot about them and was eagerly anticipating the
release of their debut album on Warner Bros. I bought it the day it came out at
Tower Records. So anxious was I to hear it that I even paid the absurd list
price of $13.99. I wrote a review of the album, read that if you want
specifics, but needless to say, the album is one of the greatest recorded works
of Western Civilization. This was an album I had been waiting for my entire
life. Something that shredded all your ideas of what music should be like. A
middle-finger of epic proportions to the entire major label system. This is
what alternative music was supposed to be like. None of this "jangly
college rock" crap like the Pixies. Mr. Bungle render groups like that
useless. Here's an analogy: Let's say that you're 9 years old and you're
looking for your dad's Playboy collection. You know where he keeps them, on the
top shelf of his closet, but how do you get up there? You start piling crap up,
books, boxes, electrical devices, pets, anything that will get you to the top
where the air-brushed goddesses await, divested of all clothing. You start
climbing up these stopgap stairs. Right when you're about to reach the top,
your older brother rushes in with a small step-ladder. He quickly scampers up
the ladder, grabs the Playboy collection and runs out of the room, off to do
what young men are known to do with such publications. Here's my point: Mr.
Bungle represents that step-ladder your older brother brought in. All that junk
you piled up represents The Black Crowes, Anthrax, the Violent Femmes, Paula
Abdul or any other useless music. Right then, your makeshift ladder collapses
right on your fat little nine year old face. The step-ladder that your brother used
is still standing. Next time you'll try that step-ladder. Next time you'll try
Mr. Bungle.

Of course, I was excited to see Mr. Bungle at NYU on
Halloween. I wondered what types of people they would be. Child molesters or
Harvard scholars? Both, perhaps? Were there any band members or was the whole
album put together by one mind? I had listened to the album several times, and
the possibility that living humans were behind it was somewhat disappointing.
So eager was I, that I didn't even wait for the show, I went early to Loeb
Student Center for the soundcheck. When I got there, someone pointed out Mr.
Bungle's lead singer to me. His name is Vlad Drac. He's got a side project back
in San Francisco called Faith No More. They're not as good as Mr. Bungle, but
that's kinda like saying a certain book isn't as good as the Bible. Still, I
have a feeling that this FNM may be extremely popular someday. I start talking
to Vlad. We hit it off right away. We know some of the same people and share an
appreciation for Godflesh, which is being blasted over the PA system. He agrees
to do an interview with me as soon as the soundcheck is finished. 30 minutes
later, I'm sitting in a Loeb conference room with the six members of Mr.
Bungle, their manager, crew, and some girl who was apparently in love with Vlad
Drac. I have a few questions prepared but most I make up on the spot. The whole
interview is a blur. I don't remember much.

Listening to the tape of my encounter with Mr. Bungle jogged
my memory of the traumatic events that occurred. The first thing I hear is them
planning how their set is going to go. It sounds like a football team going
over half-time strategy. One of them sets a cup full of ice over the door,
rigged to fall on whoever is next to enter the room. I start my interview and
Vlad Drac leaves the room. The tape then starts to sound like something from
the album, there's screaming, shouting, burping, cursing, bits of muffled
conversation, unexplainable noises. I ask how the band got on Warner Bros and
they're not really sure. "By force," says one. Each band member tells
me their name. Dunn on bass, Scummy on guitar, McKinnon and Theobald Brooks
Lengyel on horns and Heifetz on drums. Heifetz tells me he's not going to say
anything because he's studying for a big quiz, but "I might come up with
something later." I discover that MTV is going to be at tonight's show to
make sure Mr. Bungle is "kidding." "We made a video and they
think it's got hidden mass murderer messages in it," Scummy explains.
"Does it?" I ask. "They're not too hidden," he replies. I
ask what song they made a video for. Scummy tells me the video is for
"Travolta" and then has an argument with Heifetz over the song's true
title. I ask how the band got thrash jazz assassin John Zorn to produce the album.
"Basically we kicked his ass in," informs Theobald Brooks Lengyel.
Scummy, apparently the only one interested in the interview, says "He's
such a bum that we felt really sorry for him." Dunn tells me, "The
guy writes so much music that is just inaccessible, you can't listen to it.
He's basically a 20th century failure, we're trying to help him out."

How exactly did Mr. Bungle develop their novel style of
music? "We picked it up from being a death metal band and being addicted
to video games," explains Scummy. Dunn jumps in by saying, "And
listening to Mercyful Fate. Pass that pizza you fucker!" to a fellow band
member. Is the music entirely planned out in advance? "100%, there's
almost no improvisation on it," says Scummy. "Except for half of
it," adds Dunn. I ask Scummy about serial killer/clown John Wayne Gacy --
would he like the Mr. Bungle album? "We don't have too many homosexual
references... we have the whole clown thing, maybe if we gained some weight or
something." Mr. Bungle's fondness for masturbation has been
well-documented. Is it the throbbing force behind Mr. Bungle? I wanted to hear
it from the band themselves. "It's probably as important as it is to
everyone else in the world," Scummy tells me. "No one's willing to
admit it like we are. We're a lot more open than anyone else in the
world," adds Dunn. Horn player Mc Kinnon finally says something, his sole
comment of the interview. "Now that it's out in the open, we're trying to
hide it again." Scummy details what Mr. Bungle plans to move on to:
"We're graduating to shit on the face, kiddie porn, stuff like that.
Pretty soon we'll have our master's degree, move on to snuff films and get our
doctorate."

Me: "What are you trying to accomplish by using bowel
movement samples at the end of 'Slowly Growing Deaf'?"

Heifetz: "To build the biggest roller coaster
ever."

I am of course curious about the live show. What about the
mayhem and samples that's on the album between songs? Is that going to be
reproduced live? "We figure most bands don't reproduce the silence between
their songs on their albums live," says Dunn. "If we put space in
between songs, we'd be reproducing other people's ideas. Silence is a cover
song," elucidates Scummy. I have to know who Mr. Bungle is. Who is a Mr. Bungle?
Theobald Brooks Lengyel asks me for a coke. Scummy tells me that Mr. Bungle is,
"...any kind of asshole, murderer, dickhead, loser, geek, whatever."
Dunn goes deeper into Bungology for my benefit. "Anybody who's teased to
the point of hanging themselves is Mr. Bungle." Scummy adds that the
ultimate Mr. Bungle would be anyone who hung themselves with their mother's
underwear in order to achieve higher orgasm.

In ten years, can the band see themselves as big as the
Grateful Dead, with Bungle-heads all over the world? "I'll probably end up
cutting one of these assholes' fucking throats before then," says Scummy.
Just then, an NYU student walks into the room and the cup of ice that was set
up earlier falls on him. He takes it in good stride, which probably disappoints
the band. Singer Vlad Drac walks back into the room and has this to say:
"I just got stuck in the fire stairway. I walked in and thought it was a
regular stairway. Every door was locked. So I ripped out the alarm wires so I
wouldn't set it off." He tells me that the major influence on the band is
a TV preacher named Robert Tilton. "You know how there was a reason why
Bill Graham died? He's our reason." A few band members did impressions of
this Robert Tilton. It was pretty funny, too bad you weren't there to see it.
Vlad Drac starts talking about the MTV controversy and suddenly I realize that
he's really the most normal member of the group. He's like the smart kid in
high school who's pressured to help the stupid kids cheat on the test. Then
after the test, the stupid kids tell the teacher that the smart kid cheated.
The balding drummer Heifetz starts to perform a haircut on himself. What's the
impetus for their conduct during this interview? "Every straight interview
we've given made us look like complete morons," explains Vlad Drac.

I got to see Mr. Bungle twice during the CMJ Music Marathon.
The first time was on Halloween at Loeb Student Center. "Every day is
Halloween for Mr. Bungle, except Halloween," Dunn told me. Vlad Drac jumps
off the PA stack, gets back onstage and then tackles the guitarist. Two days
later, I saw Mr. Bungle at Maxwell's in Hoboken, New Jersey. This time, Vlad
starts to eat some guy's braided hair in the middle of a song. In both shows,
Mr. Bungle did cover songs by Mr. Rogers and the Dead Kennedys as well as other
stuff. It was real special. Really.